The ink and coating industry is faced with the problems of reducing volatile emissions necessitated by the state and federal regulations being enacted to control the effluents allowed to escape into the atmosphere. This has prompted considerable reformulation and one of the routes being taken is the replacement of all or essentially all of the volatile solvents in a coating or ink composition with reactive components that become a part of the cured composition. These compositions have become known in the art as 100 percent reactive compositions. Many of these compositions may be cured by thermal polymerization on the coated substrate, and many can be cured by irradiation with ionizing or non-ionizing energy.
In the past many difficulties have been observed in producing radiation curable, high solids ink or coating compositions that produce finished products having good hardness and toughness together with satisfactory adhesion.